"The CitiWatch program is a vital part of Baltimore's effort to reduce violent crime in our neighborhoods. The cameras serve as a force multiplier that enables the men and women of the Baltimore Police Department to do more to protect the citizens of this great city," Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.

The cameras, funded by the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention and grants from the Abell Foundation, stretch from the Washington Monument to 20th Street, and bring the number of cameras in the city's network to 622, officials said. The mayor's office said 114 of those were added during Rawlings-Blake's tenure.

Much of the cameras are in the downtown area. See a map on the city's Open Baltimore web site. There are debates about how useful the cameras are - last month, five people were shot in a span of 24 hours within view of a city surveillance camera on Greenmount Avenue - but an Urban Institute study on Baltimore's cameras found that the cameras yield $1.50 in benefits for every $1 spent.

In the Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association's latest newsletter, the association said it played a lead role in the Midtown purchase and installation of new security cameras on Charles Street and "several other problem areas."

"The quality of the cameras is so high that they can record license plates over a block away and have already been used to arrest a number of robbery suspects," the newsletter said.